You may remember Wisconsin Governor Scott Walker from his cowardly and sneaky women's rights stripping last week. But did you know that before he was limiting sex ed and repealing pay equity laws, he was rolling back laws that gave same sex couples the right to visit each other in the hospital? What could this move possibly do to improve Wisconsin's economic prospects? Why seek to make it extra hard to visit a family member who is sick? Doesn't it kind of seem like he's just being a dick on purpose?

Just last week, on the eve of a holiday weekend, the jerk of the north signed into laws limiting abortion, repealing the state's equal pay law, and weakening sex education all cowardly-like, with nary a peep to the public. But he's been leading the gubernatorial Race to Act Like A Huge Jerk for awhile with this cruel, hateful move to limit family hospital visits.

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In order to understand the full magnitude of dickery inherent in Walker's actions, we have to rewind to the year 2006, when the state of Wisconsin amended its constitution to bar gay marriage or other similar arrangement between same-sex couples because, I don't know, Protecting Marriage from the Glittery Menace of Gays or something stupid. Because of this, same sex couples in the state weren't allowed any of the rights of married couples, even the ones you'd have to be a heartless bastard to deny, like hospital visitation rights. To remedy this, in 2009, the then-Democratic controlled state legislature passed a law granting same-sex couples the right to register with their respective county clerks in order to legally secure their right to visit their partner in the hospital. Of course, haters, as they are wont to do, began hating almost immediately and sued the state for what they said was a violation of the 2006 state constitutional amendment. At the time of the complaint, a Republican Attorney General refused to defend the State of Wisconsin, saying that the jerk protesters had a point and that the visitation rights law was indeed unconstitutional, and so a private attorney was hired to defend the case.

Now that there's a limited government Tea Party conservative in the governor's office, he went on right ahead and limited government right into the hospital room of committed same sex couples and filed a motion to stop defending the case.

And Bucky Badger wept.

Update: The New Civil Rights Movement's story's author reached out to me to let me know he'd based the piece on a story from a year ago. Doesn't make Walker any less of a dick.